Scousers are different. Liverpool might be a great football team, Champions League finalists two years on the trot (I sat in the stands, cheering them to victory in 2005 & 2019 – I guess I’m their lucky charm!). But if Liverpool FC are football royalty, the city itself is anything but. And it wouldn’t want it any other way.
Tough, challenging, full of wit and hard work. Scousers grow up with a sense of humour and a commitment to getting stuck into the job in hand. Traditional values. Supporting your mates, helping your colleagues but no beating about the bush. If something needs to be said, say it. The Liverpool way – with humour, and a twinkle in the eye, but telling things as they are. You don’t last long with an ego in Liverpool. I live in Tel Aviv now, with a half Aussie, half Israeli wife – an entrepreneur and ex semi pro footballer herself. Not that I wanted to leave Liverpool, but Tel Aviv has something it lacks: sun for three hundred days of the year. You’re lucky to get thirty in Liverpool. Then again, Tel Aviv offers more than just sunny weather; it’s home to a buzzing atmosphere and amazing food. Plus, of course, the tech scene is incredible.
We all love a BBQ – Better to hold one in the sun than under the mist of a British summer. Bit like a business advisor, better to have one who can shine a light on what needs to be done, rather than hide it under a fog of vagueness, corporate speak and confusion. If my wife and child are the centre of my life (and it would be strange if they weren’t), if football is my passion then advising young businesses is my motivation. Nothing, not even Mo Salah sprinting onto a Bobby Firmino pass to slot home, can give me greater satisfaction than helping a business as it enters its phase of rapid growth. Using my fifteen years in business development and sales – a decade as a sales leader – to analyse forensically how a company can cope with rapid change, can develop and establish itself in the competitive and ever changing B2B tech and SaaS marketplace.
As a person, I am driven by the power of business growth and performance, by entrepreneurial self-belief and independence. It’s just that everybody needs a bit of help from time to time to reinforce that self-belief, to clear the path to independence. To help to drive themselves forwards to new challenges and fresh landscapes.
As Seth Godin said: ‘The only thing worse that starting something and failing…is not starting something.’
I hope that I am painting a picture of the sort of business advisor you will be getting if you hire me: a clear thinker, an advisor with a track record, somebody who is straight talking but a positive supporter, not a negative critic. Somebody who gives the real world, down to earth yet up to date, support a business, and its boss, needs. I do not see myself as just a consultant, rather somebody who will roll up his sleeves and execute the plans we set in place. For me, it is not just suggesting a go to market strategy but assisting the company in delivering it. Theory is very important, but practice is crucial. Because I am a ‘doer’, rather than a ‘teller’, I bring direct, first-hand and up to date experience of best practice in the workplace.
But enough details about my approach, as important as that is in a business advisor. Why not give me a call, or drop me a line, so that we can chat – informally and free of charge – about your business, and consider ways in which I might be able to help you take it to the next level?